MORE GOOD NEWS IN JUSTIN WOLFE CASE
September 07, 2012 – 2:11 PM | via Richmond Times-Dispatch
Va. won’t appeal decision vacating death sentence
By LARRY O’DELL | Associated Press
The Virginia attorney general’s office said today it will not appeal a court’s ruling exonerating a death row inmate convicted of hiring another man to kill his marijuana supplier.
Justin Michael Wolfe was sentenced to death for the 2001 slaying of Daniel Petrole Jr. in a case that exposed a multimillion-dollar drug ring run by young people barely out of high school in the affluent northern Virginia suburbs. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month upheld a judge’s decision vacating the 31-year-old’s conviction and sentence because prosecutors withheld evidence that would have discredited their star witness — the triggerman, who later recanted his testimony.
Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli’s office did not oppose a ruling today finalizing the appellate court’s decision.
“In our opinion, further litigation would not change the result,” Cuccinelli spokeswoman Caroline Gibson wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
Man says wrongful conviction in 1978 rape case ‘a nightmare’
Posted: Sep 03, 2012 10:43 PM EDT Updated: Sep 04, 2012 9:05 AM EDT
WILLIAMSBURG, VA (WWBT) –
Bennett Barbour was convicted in Williamsburg decades ago for the rape of a William and Mary college student at an off-campus apartment.
He served more than four years for the crime, though he proclaimed for decades he didn’t commit. Finally, the courts agree.
Recent DNA tests on the old evidence point to someone else for the crime. The state issued Barbour a Writ of Innocence in May, which basically means the state agrees that he is innocent and he has been exonerated of the crime.
Barbour has kept records of every detail of the case and every story ever reported, but he doesn’t need them for reference. He remembers every moment and every decision that made him a convicted felon and changed his life forever.
“Everything I was supposed to be a part of I couldn’t do, because they took it away from me,” said Barbour.
Ending the pursuit of an innocent man
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In 2001, aggressive Prince William County prosecutors concealed critical evidence that would have helped Justin Michael Wolfe’s defense against a murder charge. They withheld eight pieces of material evidence, persuaded the real killer to implicate Wolfe to get a lighter sentence, then argued successfully to put 19-year-old Wolfe on death row.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals documented the behavior by prosecutors and police. The court upheld a federal judge’s decision to vacate Wolfe’s convictions and death sentence.
Rather than seek a rehearing in federal court or a retrial in Prince William County, the state should stop its years-long persecution of Wolfe and set him free.